Project Description

Now Is Then: Snapshots from the Maresca Collection

With the press of a button, a picture is taken. In an instant, now becomes then. For decades preceding the advent of Polaroids and digital photography, picture taking was a thrilling and nerve-racking event.

Now is Then: Snapshots from the Maresca Collection features 150 images from the golden age of snapshot photography — the 1920s through the 1960s — selected from a collection of nearly 600 snapshots assembled by a leading expert on vernacular art, Frank Maresca. This compilation is unique in the way that the images both celebrate and question photographic conventions. The pictures reproduced here are quirky, elegant, and often as heartbreaking as they are heartwarming.

Texts, by authors well known for innovative work in the field of visual culture, present fresh perspectives on the snapshot and its power over us. Unlike previous explorations of vernacular photography, Now is Then takes a step forward to look at the broader cultural impact of snapshots – why we make them, how we use them, why they become relics, and, most importantly, what they reveal about us.